Archive for April, 2012

So, Final Exams are coming up, and I am awash in papers and tests of all varieties. As opposed to writing for this, I’ll just drop in with the occasional tidbit or artwork that I’ve muddled with to relax between pounding the intellectual turf. Have a taste!

This has to be one of my favorite pictures of Christ. I know, I know, it looks hippy, but I like the Universality of it. He’s just beckoning to each and every one of us, wearing a robe that shows in no uncertain terms that He really is the Lord of All Nations.

I recently began watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. I highly doubt that I need to explain why I love this picture. Also, props to Bad Catholic for introducing me to it.

I first read the quote “He went consenting, Or else he was no king…It was no man’s place to say to him, “It is time to make the offering.” from Mary Renault’s “The King Must Die” as the chapter header of some portion of Watership Down. I instantly thought of my own Bleeding King. To that end, I butchered the construction of this on Picnik.

I made this based off of a Full Metal Alchemist one my friend the Catholic Chaoticist over on tumblr had posted up. As many flaws as Bleach had to begin with, and as many as it developed, I did enjoy what I watched of it, especially these two fellows. To date, Kubo Tite is the only man who has created a main character I can identify with fairly well. What that says about me, or more importantly, Kurosaki Ichigo (the serious looking gentleman with the glorified carving knife), is besides the point. On a side note…Abarai Renji is holding his sword in the most uncomfortable way possible. I’m estimating that monster weighs about 15 Ilbs…so why would you ever rest that weight on your body, blade down?

(Names replaced to avoid any breaches of confidentiality.)
It was fairly cold out around 1 AM Friday Morning. A few hours ago I had been at a Latin Holy Thursday Mass with some friends, muddling through a wonderful Sacrament that I knew well in a language that I did not. My friend Perry and I were sitting on the inside of the giant metal modern art sculpture, hiding far back in the cleft facing the NKU University Center, keeping to the shadows and keeping nearly silent. Last night had been easier, as me and my two other friends, Jackson and Mark, had been blessed with more shadow to hide in. The nearly full moon had been covered by clouds then. It had also been warmer and the wind had not bitten half so harshly. Earlier Perry, Jessa, Sally and I had been hiding among roughly broken rocks underneath the UC/BEP walkway. The wind had knifed through the support pillars, howling and chilling us to the bone as it went.

It is entirely reasonable to ask why on earth we were hiding out like this, and why myself and other compatriots had been hiding out the previous night until 3 AM.

The answer is simple. We were hiding near the Northern Kentucky University Right to Life Onesie Display, to protect it from vandals. You see, a simple sign with a properly researched and cited fact on it, coupled with a few clotheslines that had baby clothes hung on them, is apparently enough to warrant the destruction of property under the cover of darkness. Did I mention that the display was approved by the University, or else it would have never been put up in the first place? Or that once used, the baby clothes, of which every fourth article had a red X in tape that was easily removable, were to be donated to babies in sore need of help? Yet, of course, because our stance is not the most popular, on Monday and Tuesday night our display was torn down, with all the onesies picked from their clothespins like cherries and dropped to the dirt. We do not know what time this happened on Monday, but, Tuesday, we know it happened before 1AM, as Perry, Jackson, and I, along with several of our friends, had gone to check on it and found the onesies taken down again. We also know the deed was done after 11 PM, thanks to a passerby who remarked that she had been out smoking around then, and the display had been just fine at that time.

Being very tired of this sort of guerilla trampling of our Right to Free Speech, we called the Campus Police, and various measures were taken to ensure that if it happened again, the perpetrators would be identified and caught. However, we decided that we would do what we could ourselves, after making sure our methods were legal by checking with the proper Authorities. You see, this is not the first year this sort of thing has happened. When our club was founded, one of NKU’s Professors took her class outside to tear up the crosses in our Cemetery of Innocents. Each cross represents a varying number of children slain daily by abortion in the USA, depending on the space available. She was let go and soundly chastized. Year after year, semester after semester, despite constant recriminations and condemnations from the University, displays have been damaged, and flyers torn down. With the flyers at least, some of our members have caught those responsible in the act. They were almost always unrepentant and hostile.

To that end, on Wednesday and Thursday night, several of us stayed out of sight and in the cold, watching our display to make sure that this would not happen again and that the vandals would be caught. We were lucky Wednesday, nothing eventful occurred. It originally seemed to Perry and I that the same would hold true for Thursday, and up until around one we waited, wedged in a cramped, freezing, steel hideout, whispering back and forth to pass the time. Then, he motioned for me to be silent. He had heard the distinct snip of scissors when I had not. I saw one of the clotheslines jerk, and it half fell. I was calling the police that instant, and Perry was readying his camera. I saw a short man steal up and cut down the remaining end. Then, I was busy trying to whisper into the Police Operator’s ear. My voice came out so hushed and garbled that they originally thought I was telling them that someone had pulled a gun. While I was sorting that out, Perry stepped from our hiding place and began snapping pictures. He saw four men rushing to stuff the clotheslines and baby clothes into the trash cans outside of the Art Building. By the time I had exited the art and found my bearings, after I was sure I had gotten the situation through to the Operator, I saw them running hard and fast towards the Natural Science Center. Perry was already in hot pursuit. I followed, but being slower and fatter and more out of shape than my speedy friend, remained far behind. I was roaring into the phone by that point, having figured that any noise could only help our cause. My own voice and heavy breathing, combined with my pounding footsteps, drowned out Perry’s yelling. Afterwards, he explained that in the rush, what he had meant to say got mixed up in his head, and he had bellowed “RUN, YOU COWAAARDS!!!!” instead. I sincerely wish I could have heard that.

A few moments later, both he and the fleeing vandals had vanished around the front end of the Science Center, and I was beginning to catch up, having finally found strength in my tightly-cramped legs. I kept talking to the Operator, and realized that it was very likely my good friend was alone with four criminals who had at least one cutting blade between them. I had no knowledge of whether they carried scissors or buck knives, and so when I caught sight of one of them doubling back, possibly to see if I was still on the chase, I was ready to charge in, fighting like a madman, in the event that they had turned back upon him. Praise God that such evil did not take place. When I rounded the corner, I could not find the man I had seen before, and saw two of them standing by Perry and a squad car with its lights flashing away in the parking lot behind the Norse Commons Cafeteria. Still relating everything to the Operator, as best as I could between breaths, I stopped running and shakily walked up to the Officer who was now questioning the two that had been stopped. The Operator left me in his capable hands. Officer Serious demanded that they call their fellows, and the man I had seen by the Science Center did not abandon them and reappeared in a few minutes. Their fourth man, I found out from Perry, had ducked into a building somewhere along the way, and could not be reached.

While they were standing there, I asked Officer Serious if I might say some polite words to them. He allowed it, and I asked them why they had done this, when none of us had ever torn down any Pro-Choice Display at this school. Their response was unified, instantaneous, and loud. The three began leaning forward, angry and belligerent, speaking about how horribly offensive and vile our simple baby clothes had been. One barked that the information of the sign had been a lie, that the phrase “1 out of four babies die from Abortion” was untruthful. I explained that the Guttmacher Institute, which was where we had gotten that fact, was founded by a man who had once been the President of Planned Parenthood. I was shouted down and told that Mr. Alan Frank Guttmacher, an obstetrician and gynecologist as well as a member of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, had no idea what it was like to be a woman. As if womanhood had anything to do with the ability to report valid statistics. Perry coolly remarked, “Yes, and it seems that the three of you have much experience with knowing what it’s like to be a woman.” During these few sentences, which had originally begun as an innocent request for an explanation, they had moved forward several steps, and Officer Serious found in necessary to step in front of me and tell them to shut it because there would be no debating here. To be frank…I am six foot three, two-hundred and twenty pounds. The biggest one of them was probably two-thirds my size, at the greatest. One of them could not have been more than ninety pounds. If you are willing to be that aggressive to a man that much larger than you, WITH an Officer of the Law present, to the point where he has to literally move in front of you to block your path, and YOU are the one who has committed the crime, you might want to seriously reconsider your position.

They were already trying to downplay what they had just done, and had begun apologizing like children caught with their hands in the candy jar. I was more than somewhat amused when they declared that “surely, we can work something out, come to some sort of resolution”, considering what had happened minutes before. Perry and I accepted their apologies personally, but I warned them that I was not the President of NRTL, and that if my Club Officers asked my opinion of the situation, I would advise them to do whatever the University Code and the Law required, without any thought for pleas for leniency. Given the history of actions like theirs, a strong and clear example needed to be made that this sort of behavior was intolerable. Their faces darkened then, but they remained silent, probably because they had learned overt aggression would not be looked kindly on by the Lawmen present. I gave them a brief lesson on all that had taken place before that night, starting with the first destruction of our displays and going all the way to the present moment. Now, by their own admission, they were not the ones who had taken down the onesies earlier in the week. It does bother me that the vandals were not contained in one isolated group, but, we at least caught somebody. During this, two other Officers, Jogger and Comedian, pulled up and took over the parking lot situation, while Officer Serious took Perry back up to the display. Officer Comedian took over further questioning, from which we all learned several things. It turns out that they had planned to do this earlier in the day during classes, and that all three were Theater Majors at NKU. They also had been drinking beforehand, even though one of them was only 18. The other two were 21. It turned out later that the 18-year-old tried to tell my President that he was actually Pro-life and that he had been a lookout. His behavior towards me on this night proves that statement an outright lie. I saw no disapproving look in his eyes when the three of them began shouting at me in unison. They had used scissors, thankfully, so my fears of having to face knives had been unnecessary, though not entirely unfounded. They repeatedly gave their reason for vandalism as the terrible offensive nature of our display. Officer Comedian, who has my undying applause for his handling of the situation, detained them, made them wait on their knees in the cold, and then took them off under arrest to jail. While he was doing this, he kept up an impressive stream of humorous and educational banter. When the underage man remarked that he had relatives in the military, he asked him how those relatives would feel when he told them that he had violated the very Constitutional Rights they had been fighting for. His weak response was a mumbled ‘Disappointed”. He also managed to sum up the stupidity of what those three had done by explaining that if he saw a sign declaring “Kill the police!” in someone’s yard, he did not have the right to go tear it down, break their windows, raid their fridge, and eat their food in their easy chair.

One of the vandals complained that the pavement was really hurting his knees. I remarked that the large chunks of rock and cold wind under the walkway by the University Center had hurt while we were waiting for them earlier. They responded that that took dedication. “Well, we’re tired of you tearing our shit down.” I said.

In summation, all three planned this ahead of time, got themselves a little drunk, and came up to campus to cut this display down and throw it in the trash. They seemed unphased when I explained that the clothes were to be donated to needy children. So much for their love for those in need. All of their behavior was admitted to Campus Police Officers, who promptly processed them, including the fourth man, who turned himself in later that night. In addition to various alcohol related charges, the have been charged with Criminal Mischief. the University, while unable to tell us what punishment they would receive due to confidentiality rules, made it clear that they would handle the situation, and I have full confidence in their ability to do so.

There is something about waiting in silence in the dark of the night which tests the soul. Even laying in wait with a group of people can be a trying experience. As the time wears on, and you become accustomed to your surroundings, the initial nervousness and shock wears off, only to be replaced by a feeling more pervasive and paranoid. At the start of things, every skitter of leaves across the ground, every bit of movement, every stray person walking past your field of vision, they all spook you a little bit. You get jumpy and your head darts around, trying to investigate anything that seems like a possible threat. Late at night, everything does. Once that period subsides, you can relax a bit, and let yourself breathe a little more easily. The tension never leaves the depths of your mind, though. It is the background melody to your evening symphony, playing throughout the whole piece, and rising to a thunderous crescendo every time thereafter that you hear something that might be amiss. I do not recommend doing this for an hour, let alone five of them at a time.

There is a kind of madness in being forced by necessity to stand guard over your own Freedom of Expression at a University dedicated to helping you develop your ability to use it. The madness is trebled when at that University, which for you has become a place where you come to learn and grow, a place where your friends and loved ones reside, a place that stands for something good and wholesome in your life, you are made to feel, even for an instant, that you are about to fight for the life and limb of one of your friends simply because someone disagreed with what you said. The full weight of this outrage did not sink home until recently, as in the moment, I was actually too full of adrenaline and get-at-them to be afraid of much of anything, or give any thought to the issue beyond resolving to knock some heads together should it come to that. But now, with the anger and rush of the chase gone, I look at those brief five seconds of time in shock and horror. For in those five seconds I was forced by the unknowns of the situation to prepare myself for something almost unthinkable: I had steeled myself to come snarling around a corner and begin unleashing my wrath upon four armed men, with my bare fists, in an effort to preserve the well-being of my friend and myself. Because someone had decided that the way were talking was offensive. This may sound silly or paranoid to you, but you try chasing down four strange men who, by any stretch of reasoning, have to have some sort of blades on them. Then imagine losing sight of your friend and your marks, and having all sounds but your own voice and the wind vanish with the suddeness of the Big Bang. Do I sound overly concerned to you now? Again, I thank God that the men we hunted down were too frightened initially to turn on us instead of flee, and that they were not armed, but we had no way of gauging their intent or equipment. This point is especially poignant, for after hearing of the events I have just described, some of my friends and relatives have noted that their behavior indicated that were the police not present, we may very well have had a fight on our hands. I am inclined to agree with their assessment of things.

What kind of mongrel do you have to be to decide that another’s voice should be silenced merely because it makes you angry? This is even lower than silencing a voice for the “greater good”, for at least that requires that the silencer gag their victim in a badly executed attempt to save or protect society. But simple disgust with another’s opinion? Please, the Propaganda machines of Red China and North Korea have more honor than you. They at least have an ideological reason to eliminate Free Speech, you are just a cantankerous child complaining because somebody said something you find ugly. Your reaction to opposing opinions is akin to a man punching another in the nose because he just stated that he did not like rutabagas.

Folks, I sincerely ask that if you know men or women like the ones my friend and I dealt with, you counsel them on a better way to get out their frustrations. There was one such man who did so, with this very display. He calmly sat in front of it, for two days, with his own homemade sign, answering questions when asked. At no time was he offensive or impolite. He staunchly disagreed with our ideals, but handled that disagreement the appropriate way. I thank that lone man, for those like him remind me that not all those I face when it comes to standing up for what I believe will be dogs and swine, regardless of the evils I have seen done for the sake of trying to tear myself and those like me down.

Oh, and of course, if you know anyone preparing to vandalize something, call the Police. And get yourself an ice cold beer afterwards.

At my University, the campus pro-life group currently has a display against Abortion up. It is an entirely legal and approved display in the correct provided display area. And yet someone, or some group of people, has decided that it is not okay for us to have such threatening things as baby clothes, red tape, and a sign explaining that 1 out of 4 babies is murdered through abortion. They have voiced this through the only reasonable means they could come up with, probably after a long, drawn out meeting. They have vandalized our display twice in as many days. Both times the damage was done under cover of darkness, with only the eyes of their possible fellow transgressors and God upon them as they went about their criminal business. I am sure they all congratulated themselves for being champions of Truth and Justice, or if they were of a more juvenile bent, champions of rebellion and their own puerile pride.

“Look at me, girls! I’m rebelling against something tied to symbols of authority! Mate with me!”

I am almost certain that was said, if any of the perpetrators were boys. I do not say men, because to be a man one must have courage. Of course, courage is not what is required to simply run up and tear down baby clothes off of clotheslines, a task that probably takes at most a few minutes to complete. Even if you did it during the middle of the day, you could be gone into the swarm of students changing classes during lunch before anyone could stop you. In the evening, the job is infinitely easier. There are many twenty-minute windows in which you could run up and not be seen. Did I mention that this part of campus does not have cameras pointed towards it? Now think about how easy it would be to sneak up and do that in the dark between 11pm and 1am. Yeah. That takes bravery. It takes immense mettle to throw to ground clothes that, once used for our purposes, will go to needy babies.

There is one counter protester who made his own sign and sits in front of the display. I debated him for some time on his message and mine. He was polite, clear, and rational. He did not block the view of passers by. He was bothered, to say the least, by the fact that folk were tearing down our displays. Though our views are antithetical, he has my respect for knowing how to respect the views of others without conceding his own. I bear him no ill will.

As for the vandals? Though I pray for their souls, I sincerely hope that they are caught and publicly humiliated by an onrush of condemnation, so that they might learn that theirs is not the correct path.

It is truly sad. Those who shriek the loudest for Freedom and Truth and Fairness are those who are denying myself and my associates the Freedom of Expression, our right to assert what we believe as Truth, and our ability to fairly represent ourselves. This sort of behavior has been a part of the local environment since the founding of the campus pro-life group, when a Professor, who was let go on account of her behavior, took her class outside to tear down the crosses in our Cemetery of of Innocents display. There has not been a year when flyers, crosses, and other displays have not been torn apart or broken. Some of our members have caught people in the act of tearing down our flyers.

We have endured despite this, and we shall continue to do so. Though of different creeds, we are united in purpose. We will not stop until Abortion is dead, or we are, even if it takes our whole lifetime and the lifetimes of those that shall take our place when we pass on. We will take buffets, spitting, and curses. You can beat us, chain us, gag us, even slay us. We shall not be silent. We shall not admit defeat. This is our resolve.

Your meager mite of temerity, if you could call it that, will wither in light of the fury and might of our own.

To those of you who side with us, pray to whatever God or gods you serve, and be prepared for the fight of your lives.

To those of you that have pitted yourself against us, those of you willing to degrade and abuse and discredit us, be prepared for humiliation, for weakness of your level is not tolerated by the Just of any Creed, Theist or otherwise.